Developed by Team Lazerbeam and published by Devolver Digital, the game enters Steam Early Access on September 10, 2026 for PC and Mac. Its biggest hook is not simply that it looks weird.
The real difference is mechanical. One deck handles combat, while another controls exploration, card modification and progression through the dungeon.
If Slay the Spire appeals to you because of synergy hunting, Inscryption because of its strange tactile presentation, and dungeon crawlers because you like physically moving through hostile spaces, Shroom and Gloom sits somewhere between all three.
Why keep it on your radar? Shroom and Gloom is not another deckbuilder with a different coat of paint. Its dual-deck structure, physical first-person dungeon presentation and deliberately breakable card-upgrade systems give it a much clearer identity than most new games entering this crowded genre.
Table of Contents
What is Shroom and Gloom?
At the simplest level, Shroom and Gloom is a first-person roguelike deckbuilder.
You descend through surreal hand-drawn dungeons populated by aggressive fungal creatures, build a deck during the run and try to create enough synergy to survive increasingly dangerous encounters.
That description sounds familiar until you actually look at how the game presents itself.
Instead of watching cards resolve on a conventional board, you are positioned directly inside the dungeon. The environment wraps around you as a 3D space, while enemies, cards, effects and scenery use Team Lazerbeam’s rough hand-drawn artwork.
The result looks closer to an animated sketchbook turned into a dungeon than a conventional card battler.
It is messy on purpose, with distorted mushrooms, scratched textures, saturated colors and cards filling the bottom of the screen while enemies stare directly at you from the tunnel ahead.
The double-deck system is the real hook
Most deckbuilders ask one deck to handle almost everything. Shroom and Gloom divides that responsibility in two.
The Combat Deck determines how you fight. These cards handle attacks, damage setups, status effects and the combinations you need to survive encounters.
The separate Explore Deck is used outside combat. It helps you navigate the dungeon, interact with obstacles, modify cards and unlock new equipment or abilities.
That separation changes the decision-making considerably.
Improving your combat deck does not automatically solve exploration problems, while spending resources or opportunities on utility can influence how strong you are when the next group of mushrooms appears.
Why this matters: exploration becomes part of deckbuilding rather than downtime between battles. The dungeon itself is another system you have to build around.
That makes Shroom and Gloom particularly interesting for players who like deckbuilders because of decision density rather than simply collecting powerful cards.
Cards are meant to become completely unreasonable
Shroom and Gloom is not shy about letting a successful build get out of control.
Cards can be repeatedly grown and modified throughout a run. A basic card you started with can eventually turn into an oversized attack, while rarer cards can be transformed into what the developers openly describe as game-breaking super-weapons.
That gives the game a different philosophy from deckbuilders that try to keep individual cards within tightly controlled limits.
Here, creating something absurd appears to be part of the fantasy.
The interesting part is finding the path from weak starting tools to a combination where multiple effects suddenly feed into each other.
Players who enjoy the moment in Balatro, Slay the Spire or Monster Train when a build stops feeling merely efficient and starts feeling unfair should understand the appeal immediately.
For more games built around that kind of run-based synergy hunting, see our best deckbuilding roguelikes guide.
Why block an enemy when you can cook it?
This is where Shroom and Gloom’s tone and mechanics start working together.
Defeated enemies are not necessarily finished with their role in the run.
You can season, skewer and roast fungal enemies before eating them to restore lost health. Some can also be thrown into a pot and turned into soups that provide stronger effects.
That creates another layer of resource management around encounters.
An enemy is not only a threat. Under the right circumstances, it can become healing or an ingredient in something more useful later.
It also gives the game one of those mechanics that is easy to explain in a headline but still has a real systemic purpose underneath the joke.
What games is Shroom and Gloom similar to?
No single comparison really covers it, but a few games explain different sides of the design.
| If you like… | What overlaps | Biggest difference |
|---|---|---|
| Slay the Spire | Run-based deckbuilding, synergies and tactical turn-based choices | Shroom and Gloom explores a physical first-person dungeon and uses two decks |
| Inscryption | Strange atmosphere, cards presented as physical objects and an unconventional visual identity | Shroom and Gloom is more openly structured around repeatable roguelike runs |
| Monster Train | Escalating card upgrades and builds that can become wildly overpowered | No lane-defense structure, with first-person dungeon exploration instead |
| Hand of Fate | Cards blended with the feeling of physically moving through an adventure | Shroom and Gloom is more directly a turn-based deckbuilder |
| Wildfrost | Tactical card sequencing and a strong hand-drawn identity | Shroom and Gloom is first-person, darker and much more interested in modifying cards indefinitely |
The Slay the Spire comparison is useful for explaining the genre, but visually and structurally Shroom and Gloom is trying to create a much more physical relationship with its dungeon.
The cards are still the system underneath everything. You just feel like you are carrying them somewhere unpleasant.
What is actually included at Early Access launch?
Shroom and Gloom enters Early Access rather than launching as a finished 1.0 game.
Team Lazerbeam says the launch build contains all of its key systems alongside two distinct pathways through the game. Each pathway has its own characters and separate pools of exploration and combat cards.
The developers currently describe the card pool as roughly 300 Explore and Combat cards per pathway, alongside quests, synergies and unlocks intended to support repeated runs.
The Early Access launch roster consists of five playable characters:
- Paperboy
- Lunch-lady
- Concerned Parent
- Janitor
- Activist
Team Lazerbeam expects Early Access to last roughly 12 to 24 months.
During that period, the plan is to add another pathway with its own cards, additional character classes and more quests and challenges across the existing routes.
The studio also says it does not currently plan to increase the game’s price when it eventually reaches full release.
Worth knowing: Early Access means the game is deliberately still evolving. If you prefer deckbuilders only after their card pools, balancing and progression systems are considered finished, waiting for 1.0 may make more sense.
Who is Shroom and Gloom for?
Keep it on your radar if…
- You like Slay the Spire-style roguelike deckbuilding but want a much stranger presentation.
- You enjoy finding card interactions that can scale into ridiculous combos.
- You want exploration decisions to matter as much as combat choices.
- Hand-drawn, psychedelic dungeon art immediately catches your attention.
- You like games that let strong builds feel genuinely broken.
- You enjoy Early Access projects where community feedback influences development.
It may not be for you if: you dislike card games, want real-time first-person combat, prefer polished 1.0 releases or need a long narrative campaign to drive you forward.
Why Shroom and Gloom is worth watching now
Deckbuilding roguelikes do not have a visibility problem anymore. They have a differentiation problem.
Slay the Spire established the template, Balatro demonstrated just how far synergy-based run design could travel, and dozens of smaller games now arrive with cards, relics and branching routes.
Shroom and Gloom has a much easier elevator pitch than most of them.
It is a first-person double-deckbuilder where cards handle both fighting and navigating a psychedelic mushroom dungeon, and successful builds can eventually turn enemies into dinner.
That does not guarantee that the long-term balance will work, especially through an Early Access period where hundreds of cards and multiple pathways need to coexist.
But it does give the project a clear reason to exist.
The free demo has already given the developers a substantial player-feedback base before the paid Early Access launch, and Team Lazerbeam says that community testing has been central to development from the prototype stage onward.
For readers already following the genre, this is exactly the sort of project worth watching: recognizable enough to understand immediately, but strange enough that it does not feel like a direct attempt to recreate the current market leader.
You can also see where it sits in the wider genre in our best roguelike games roundup.
Shroom and Gloom’s weirdness is doing useful work
The mushrooms, grotesque artwork and cooking jokes are what make Shroom and Gloom instantly recognizable, but the systems underneath them are the more important reason to pay attention.
Splitting combat and exploration into separate decks creates meaningful tension. Infinite card growth creates room for outrageous builds. Turning enemies into food connects survival directly to the things you defeat.
Most importantly, all of those ideas point in the same direction rather than feeling like unrelated gimmicks.
If you want another tactical roguelike deckbuilder but feel like you have already climbed enough towers and followed enough nodes on a flat map, Shroom and Gloom offers a genuinely different place to take a deck.
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